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Description
Here is a dynamite shot done by TheCosmicBeholder to further the storyline of Valor Girl, her uncle, Commander Valor, and the trials and tribulations of their fantastic, dysfunctional lives!
It takes place after THIS STORY .

ENJOY!!

================================================================

The mighty Commander Valor felt anything but mighty, these days. It had been almost five days since he'd heard from his niece, Charlotte. She'd been distant, ever since he spilled the beans regarding her mother's fate and that of her long, lost twin sister.

  He'd known that it was a mistake to tell her such things. He'd regretted it almost immediately. Charlotte had always been a willful girl, forever searching for her independence. She didn't understand that having superpowers didn't mean that she couldn't get hurt. There were far worse things than getting laserbeamed in the face or punched through a building. Even superheroes had hearts that could break. No healing factor or regeneration power could put that right once it happened. That was what he'd always tried to protect her from. Perhaps he went about it the wrong way. He wasn't the greatest when it came to expressing his feelings in a direct or even mature manner. That was not part of his vast powerset. The folks who raised him - 'Clyde and Clara Trent' - his supposed aunt and uncle whom, in fact, were agents of the clandestine biogenetics firm that presented themselves as a pharmacological company and were responsible for the genemod process that gave him and his sister, Charlene, powers in the first place - were, in essence, kind people, but not exactly the warmest. They kept secrets by trade, and a bit of that seemed to have rubbed off on both Charles and his sister. As such, Commander Valor had been secretly keeping tabs on his niece for a little while, now... just to make sure she stayed safe, of course.
  He had Walter Simpson - the speedster of The Order Patrol - aka Bluestreak , following her. As per usual, Chuck Trent utterly underestimated his young charge. She had the same powers and abilities that he did. It was assumed by the public, and by Chuck, himself, that her powerset was on a lower level than his own, due to her youth, and, yes, her gender. This couldn't be farther from the truth. Valor Girl was every bit as powerful as her uncle, and maybe even a bit moreso, due to the half-alien heritage that she possessed - yet another thing he'd neglected to share with her, until just recently.

  Her super-hearing was as keen as ever. Despite moving fast enough not to be seen, Bluestreak was still a gangly, six-foot-tall man in specially made boots that provided traction and the power to stop on a dime, via special cleats on the bottoms. He was many things, but, light on his feet was, surprisingly, not one of them. She could literally hear him coming from blocks away. Still, not being able to see hin, she initially dismissed it as her imagination, until one evening, while pleasantly passing the time with a few new friends she'd made, one of whom was Socrates "Socks" Walker, the nephew of her Order Patrol teammate, HardLight, and a speedster, himself, asked, out of the blue, why Bluestreak was following her, and trying to be sneaky about it. It takes someone with super-speed temporal perception to recognize when a speedster is on the move, apparently. Realizing that she was being followed, she put a plan in motion to ditch her shadow, and go about enacting a plan of action for changing her life that she'd been working on for a few days.

  Commander Valor was angry and disappointed that Bluestreak had been tricked. It turned out that the 'Charlotte Trent' that the speedster had been spying on for the last two days was, in fact, Drew Dane, a shapeshifter friend of the real Charlotte's who had acted as a decoy while she ran off to God knows where! Chuck searched and searched, but, could find no trace of her. She'd skipped her college classes for days. She hadn't shown up at her dorm room. Her roommate said that she'd been home a few days previous, but, literally disappeared shortly after walking in the door and going straight to the bathroom. Chuck figured that this had been when the shapeshifter, Drew Dane, was impersonating her. He lurked uptown, near the Herald Building, where Charlotte, Drew Dane and some of their other friends often gathered . He wasn't very fond of her palling around with them. They were mostly teenagers - a little too young for her to associate with, in his opinion - but, then, there was the mysterious "Jenny Everywhere ", some sort of dimensional traveler... and, of course, ZED HUDSON . A loose cannon with WAY too much power for Commander Valor's comfort. One of the few people on the planet in his 'weight class', and, what's worse - Zed wasn't intimidated by Commander Valor's power, position or reputation. There was no evidence that Zed was a criminal, but, The Commander was ALWAYS keeping a sly eye on the Urban Gladiator. Particularly now that he was associating with Valor Girl.
  Chuck had HardLight talk to his speedy nephew and try to extract info, but, Socrates hadn't seen Valor Girl in days. Commander Valor himself questioned Zed, after tracking him to an East side bar and grill called 'Smedley's', but, he was uncooperative.
  "Even if I HAD seen her inside of three days, what makes you think I'd tell YOU"?, Zed spat. Holding back the urge to sock the impudent thug in his face, Commander Valor simply flew off to continue the search, leaving Zed to continue drinking and mercilessly flirting with the dive bar's pretty and rather buxom bartender.

  Commander Valor canvassed almost all of New York City in the span of two days. He'd questioned Captain Evening and The Odds, and the girls of their periphery team, "Generation P" - a team that his niece, Valor Girl had temporarily joined without his knowledge or permission . He wasn't very fond of The Odds OR Section P. The last time Valor Girl had gotten involved with those people, she wound up on a damned reality show, chasing after some transdimensional superhero old enough to be her grandfather!
  Commander Valor was coming up empty in all his searches. None of the other heroes had seen hide nor hair of Valor Girl. He was starting to worry for her safety. Usually, she'd check in with him if she was to be out, if only to stave off a lecture. With no luck with superheroes, the Juggernaut of Justice figured that he'd shake down the local villains and metahuman leg-breakers.
Like a blizzard of brute force, Commander Valor literally dropped in on known hideouts, back alley speakeasys and sinister social clubs frequented by the spandex set from the Dark Side of the Tracks.

  Not caring about being subtle, or of lawsuits or his reputation as a do-gooder, Commander Valor wiped the floor with Hexia's mob of mooks , and threatened to do the same to her. She didn't know anything about Valor Girl's whereabouts. He tracked down the power-absorbing Invada, and made sure to physically incapacitate her before the interrogation . Nothing. He swooped down on the despicable Harvester and broke his arm just on general principle before questioning him. The insectoid degenerate knew nothing. Even the mercenary assassin, WolfSpider, who had been captured and humiliated on television by his niece and other members of the Order Patrol fairly recently , had no knowledge of where she could be, though, the smug bastard actually offered his dubious services as a manhunter to track her down. The Commander seriously pondered the idea for a second, then, decided that he didn't need the help of WolfSpider's kind. The only idea more odious to him was to fly over toward the Stantz Building and check on whether his niece might be in the clutches of the self-proclaimed villain organization, SCARR. After the humiliation handed to him by their leader, Dr. Echidna , he thought better of it. If their leader, "Doctor Echidna' had her, she'd have called to gloat by now.
  There was one other option that he hadn't considered - he, for the most part, had been searching for Valor Girl. Aside from checking with her dorm roommate, he hadn't really been searching for CHARLOTTE TRENT
.
  His niece was almost 21 years old. She was under a lot of stress and would most likely be spending her free time trying to blow off steam. As much as he'd like to believe that she would never sneak into a bar or club underaged, he had to admit to himself that perhaps he'd been seeing her through rose-colored glasses for a while, now. As much as he'd like to think that she was above such things, due to his 'raising her right', he had to admit that there have been some drastic changes to her personality lately -and by lately, he realized that he meant 'for the last year, or more'. Perhaps she would, indeed, turn to alcohol and wild times to tamp down the rising emotions she'd been experiencing. Also, she probably wouldn't want to be alone. It was only a matter of finding her.

  Chuck Trent was never much for the club scene, even in his younger, relatively more irresponsible days, and he was downright out of touch with whatever the HELL was going on in young people's minds these days. He had no clue where to go or what to look for. Loath as he was to admit it, there was only ONE person who might have a clue where to start. Knight Raptor.
The exchange was brief and unpleasant, as were all encounters with the Metropolitan Ninja with whom Commander Valor reluctantly shared co-leadership of The Order Patrol. Knight Raptor was a rich know-it-all who prided himself at being the best at everything. It was infuriating that a man with as much power as The Commander was frequently bested at being a superhero by a man who, for all intents and purposes had no superpowers. Still, after being condescended to and taunted, Commander Valor got what he wanted - a short list of nightclubs that Knight Raptor claimed that his niece frequented as either Charlotte or as Valor Girl. He decided that he'd try "Pineapple" first - a club that was infamous for catering to the younger set of supers in New York City. He thought it might be prudent to show up in full Commander Valor regalia. It was easy to get in. He WAS Commander Valor, after all. He still had a reputation. The brawny and obviously metahuman bouncers at the front door of the club tried to stop him, initially. He was too old to be 'cool enough' to be allowed entry, but, then, he was too powerful for them to actually STOP him. The blue-skinned one with the large horn protruding from his forehead unhooked the velvet rope and stepped aside to let the red-eyed crusader pass.

  The club was, as one might expect, pitch dark, yet filled with blinding lights that blinked and roved across the undulating crowd, and blaring noise, er, "music" that The Commander had to concentrate on blocking out. His super-hearing could be a curse, sometimes. He used his Valor-vision™ to scan the crowds - penetrating the walls of the club as well what little concealing clothing could be found on a few of the patrons to make sure those few wearing hats, trenchcoats and dark glasses weren't his niece in paranoid disguise. Nothing but useless A-List celebrities and low-level villains having a night out.
He saw a few familiar faces - heroes secretly canoodling with known villains. Married movers and shakers having trysts with people who were not their spouses. A couple of folks who were on the most wanted list, but, he didn't have the time or inclination to bother with them. He was on a more righteous mission. It's not like they didn't see him, either! He was hard to miss. 6' 4", dressed in red, white and blue, eyes glowing red with both ionic energies and an angry frustration. Several patrons began a swift, and somewhat unsubtle exodus to the exit.
  The music didn't stop, as it often does in those comedies and westerns you see at the movies, when Commander Valor strode across the busy dancefloor, but, it may as well have.
  EVERYONE stopped dancing, and stared at the caped behemoth as he made his way to the bar, having spotted, not his niece, but, someone who might know of her whereabouts.
  "YOU", he said, glaring at the lass at the bar. A leggy, curly-haired blonde with a beauty mark on her cheek, just below her right eye. She had a lemon drop in one hand and the petite hip of a lovely party-goer in the grip of her other.
"Where is my niece?!", Valor demanded. Claire Jones, the timelost possible future daughter of the superheroines Centennia and Kate Five , cocked an eyebrow at the imposing hero, swallowed the remainder of her neon yellow alcoholic beverage in one gulp and kissed her playmate on the cheek, then shooed her away with a smack on her taut bottom.
"HELLO", she barked, sarcastically, "You must be COMMANDER VALOR. It's NICE to finally MEET YOU. Your niece, Valor Girl has told me so VERYmuch about you! My name is CLAIRE (not "YOU"). Now, perhaps you'd wanna rephrase your initial question as something a bit less confrontational.... and dickish?"
  Commander Valor was not having attitude from this mere slip of a girl. It had been a very long week, and he was losing his considerable patience. Perhaps he did come across a bit aggressively, but, he was Commander Valor, goddammit, and his ego had suffered far too much disrespect in the last little while.
  "Look here, you--", he began.
"There's that 'YOU', again", Claire Jones countered, signalling the bartender with two waved fingers for another drink, "I can tell you're having some sort of difficulty. I can empathize with that, but, whatEVER it is you want from me, the 'intimidating testosterone poisoned caveman' routine is NOT gonna get it. I've taken down men twice your size without spilling my drink.... earlier this very evening, even." To emphasize her point, Claire took a sip of the fresh drink she'd just received, and, raising her left and and crooking her dainty fingers into a claw, manifested the black goo that swam in her bloodstream to slither up her forearm, cover said fingers and harden into actual razor sharp talons.

  Now, for those paying attention, by this point, the music had actually stopped. The club was dead quiet. Onlookers stood transfixed on the scene at the bar. The bartender, a slight man with blue hair and a monocle ducked down behind his bar, pressed a button concealed beneath it, and tucked himself into a ball as titanium slats fell from the ceiling, encasing the alcohol station in a protective shell. The Commander fumed. Back in the old days, the name Commander Valor garnered terror from all and sundry who would opposed him. Now, he was being stared down by some drunken slattern barely older than his own niece. Worse, she called herself Charlotte's friend! This 'Claire Jones' was another of Valor Girl's friends. Yet another one that The Commander was not very fond of. The daughter of two supers with 'a reputation', as well as being part of an 'unconventional' relationship with two other supers - one a "former" criminal, the other, notoriously transgendered. The Commander's old world sensibilities were turned on their heads every time he even THOUGHT of his impressionable young niece even being in the periphery of these people!
Despite his rising anger, Commander Valor took a very deep breath, calmed himself and slowly, deliberately and through clenched teeth, reiterated his question.

  "I would like to know where my niece is. You're her... "friend", so, you might know. IF you know, you have to tell me. Now."
Claire smirked. The black goo continued to spread across her supple body, engulfing the tight dress she wore, covering the left half of her torso and continued to slowly move west.
  "I don't know where Char-- er, 'Valor Girl' is", she stated, matter-of-factly, catching herself before letting slip her friend's secret identity and signalling over her shoulder for another drink to an absent bartender who was no longer on duty, "I haven't seen or talked to her in almost two days. The last thing I heard, she was trying to avoid some overbearing, nosy, lying, hyper-controlling ASSHOLE of a relative, who shall remain nameless, and searching for the truth about VERY IMPORTANT things that were kept from her all her LIFE! You wouldn't know anything about THAT, wouldja? That may be a clue to her whereabouts."
  The Commander tensed his mighty muscles, fully prepared to knock some respect into this young woman. Claire, no stranger to battle, could see the attack coming, and swiftly, spread the black matter across the rest of her frame, even covering her usually bare legs, making it all as solid as tank armor, and covering herself in protective spikes.
The onlookers began to flow backward, giving the two powerful supers room to destroy one another. The smarter ones left entirely. It was likely that this club wouldn't survive the onslaught. Cameraphones flashed, and many a record button was pushed as the burly mutant bouncers bulldozed their way through the throngs of club patrons, on their way to the prospective melee. Claire Jones and Commander Valor spat epithets at one another. Black tendrils slithered and writhed. Red eyes flared fiery energies. Suddenly, two people burst forth from the crowd and leapt between the two powerful combatants: A short girl in a bright red dress, sporting a red star over her right eye, with bright green eyes and hot pink hair, and a chubby Asian girl long hair down her back wearing a tight black dress emblazened with a purple octopus down the front whose tentacles splayed all around her torso, including forming the shoulder straps.
  Commander Valor recognized the star-faced girl: She called herself "Starlet', and fancied herself a superhero. She was a fan of his niece who managed to worm her way into Charlotte's social circle . She was one of the less... offensive of the people Valor Girl associated with these days, as upon searching, Commander Valor hadn't turned up any dirt on her. He had no idea who the pudgy girl in the octopus dress was, and, didn't care. They had just halted what would have been a devastating battle that might have destroyed half this city block, destroyed the club and cost lives. As much as Commander Valor desperately desired to take out his mounting frustrations - particularly on anyone belonging to the smart-assed, disrespectful younger generation of self-proclaimed heroes, this was neither the time, nor the place. Finding Charlotte was more important. Starlet and the girl in the octopus dress, along with several of the lumbering metahuman bouncers, escorted Commander Valor out the back door of the club, while Claire, now back in her tight dress, free of her black goo defenses, banged on the titanium shell around the bar, petitioning for yet another drink.

  The monster bouncers left the supers to talk amongst themselves in the dingy back alley. Ne'er-do-wells, lurking in the gloom, saw Commander Valor and Starlet and took off for parts unknown, like rats scurrying away from hungry alley cats.
"Look, I can tell you something that might help", said Starlet, seeming to genuinely worry about her favorite heroine, "Valor Girl and I have been e-mailing and texting back and forth for a while now. You... you really HURT her, y'know."
  Commander Valor felt indignant that this little girl... this complete stranger had the nerve to tell him his own family business, but, before his knee-jerk defensive attitude could activate, she continued.
  "She's angry and scared, and just wants answers. Answers that you've kept from her her entire life. She's determined to find those answers on her own because she feels she can't trust you anymore. Do you KNOW how it feels to not be able to trust the very person who's supposed to always be in your corner?!"
  Before letting fly with a lecture, which Chuck Trent suddenly realized was his default mode when speaking to anyone younger than himself, he flashed back to the day he found out that the people who raised him weren't really his aunt and uncle. He realized that, in trying to keep his niece from feeling that level of betrayal, he had, possibly, inadvertently done that very thing.
  The pudgy girl in the octopus dress spoke up, reminding Commander Valor that his behavior had been less than stellar - having Valor Girl followed, spying on her, lying to her... what did he THINK was gonna happen when she found out?! Commander Valor stared his piercing, crimson gaze at the girl for seconds on end, making her feel intimidated.
  "WHO are you, again?!", he demanded.
The girl's features immediately began to melt and blur, she lost weight and even shrank an inch or two and quick as a wink, she'd metamorphosed into a completely different person! A diminutive, androgynous-looking, lavender skinned elf with bleach white hair and freckle-spots adorning their face and neck. The octopus dress transformed itself into a black T-shirt with the same octopus where it had always been. baggy black cargo pants manifested across the lavender person's legs and the open-toed high heels became flat sandals.

  "Holy shit! Drew Dane !", came an exclamation from behind them all. Claire Jones, now three sheets to the wind, had rejoined the party, having slipped, unnoticed by all and sundry out the back door to the club and into the dark alley. The octo-girl was, indeed, Drew Dane, shapeshifting child of the sea god, Proteus, and another good friend of the missing Valor Girl. Claire weaved her way to the circle of supers and leaned, almost falling, heavily on Drew, her rather prominent bosom mashed into the face of the short demigod as she gave Drew a hug. Despite the pleasant distraction, Drew continued.
  "Look, I know you think that what you've been doing is for the best. My own parents didn't initially tell me about my own heritage until it... became an issue."

  Drew sighed and looked off the the side for a second, trying desperately to avoid staring at Claire's bust.
"Look, man", Drew continued, "I don't actually know where Charlotte is, but, I know who does".
  Claire, still annoyed at The Commander, and intoxicated almost beyond her rather strong constitution, shushed her lavender faced friend, not wanting to give an inch after the earlier rudeness that Valor had shown her. Wanting to avoid yet another potentially destructive battle, Starlet spoke up: "KNIGHT RAPTOR!", she shouted, "She got information from Knight Raptor! He gave her some bit of info on whatever she was looking for. i don't know what it was, but, whatever it was, she left immediately to go track it down! That was the last I heard from her!"
  Commander Valor, Drew and Claire all stared, utterly gobsmacked at the star-faced girl. Drew, for her taking the words right out of their mouth. Claire, because even she hadn't known the full truth. Valor Girl hadn't divulged the fact that she'd had a clear goal, or where she was going. She just said that she was going on a 'fact-finding mission' down south, and she'd declined help when Claire offered.
  Commander Valor was shocked and appalled, not only that his niece had circumvented his authority, but that she went to HIM for help - and that Knight Raptor had kept all this from him. In a blind rage, Commander Valor leapt skyward and kept moving at a bullet's pace, obviously headed toward The Hall of Order - hopefully with something other than MURDER on his mind.
  "Well", Claire slurred, "THAT happened. So... Jeanette and Cap'n Perfect're off doin'... stuff... without me. You two wanna have some fun"?

  Starlet politely declined. She wasn't quite sure that Claire was actually proposing sexual shenannigans, but, she turned the brash blonde down, anyway, as, she didn't really swing that way. (And if she DID, there's only one girl she would be game for experimenting with and she was missing, her angry Uncle currently back on the hunt for her.) Drew Dane, however, could think of little else at the moment with the tipsy time-traveller's warm and rather impressive chest currently cleaved by their angular lavender-hued nose. Claire Jones had wanted to get a shapeshifter into her bed for some time. This would be a special night, indeed.

  Meanwhile, at the Hall of Order, Knight Raptor, who practically had the entirety of NYC wired via cellphones and CCTV cams and security equipment manufactured by the Vayne Enterprises Corporation, had witnessed the night's events. Commander Valor was coming for him, with all due speed and smoldering anger. It looked like now was the time to employ the counter-measures he'd been cooking up to defend against Commander Valor. He knew that helping Valor Girl break from her uncle's controlling 'love' would set his plans in motion. He knew Chuck Trent wasn't gonna be in the mood to talk. He might even let the super-powered Juggernaut of Justice get in one good strike before seriously trying to take him out... If he decimated Valor in 'self defense', he'd be totally justified in using lethal force.

  Tonight was going to be a very good night for Knight Raptor.

Description
Here is a dynamite shot done by TheCosmicBeholder to further the storyline of Valor Girl, her uncle, Commander Valor, and the trials and tribulations of their fantastic, dysfunctional lives!
It takes place after THIS STORY .

ENJOY!!

================================================================

The mighty Commander Valor felt anything but mighty, these days. It had been almost five days since he'd heard from his niece, Charlotte. She'd been distant, ever since he spilled the beans regarding her mother's fate and that of her long, lost twin sister.

  He'd known that it was a mistake to tell her such things. He'd regretted it almost immediately. Charlotte had always been a willful girl, forever searching for her independence. She didn't understand that having superpowers didn't mean that she couldn't get hurt. There were far worse things than getting laserbeamed in the face or punched through a building. Even superheroes had hearts that could break. No healing factor or regeneration power could put that right once it happened. That was what he'd always tried to protect her from. Perhaps he went about it the wrong way. He wasn't the greatest when it came to expressing his feelings in a direct or even mature manner. That was not part of his vast powerset. The folks who raised him - 'Clyde and Clara Trent' - his supposed aunt and uncle whom, in fact, were agents of the clandestine biogenetics firm that presented themselves as a pharmacological company and were responsible for the genemod process that gave him and his sister, Charlene, powers in the first place - were, in essence, kind people, but not exactly the warmest. They kept secrets by trade, and a bit of that seemed to have rubbed off on both Charles and his sister. As such, Commander Valor had been secretly keeping tabs on his niece for a little while, now... just to make sure she stayed safe, of course.
  He had Walter Simpson - the speedster of The Order Patrol - aka Bluestreak , following her. As per usual, Chuck Trent utterly underestimated his young charge. She had the same powers and abilities that he did. It was assumed by the public, and by Chuck, himself, that her powerset was on a lower level than his own, due to her youth, and, yes, her gender. This couldn't be farther from the truth. Valor Girl was every bit as powerful as her uncle, and maybe even a bit moreso, due to the half-alien heritage that she possessed - yet another thing he'd neglected to share with her, until just recently.

  Her super-hearing was as keen as ever. Despite moving fast enough not to be seen, Bluestreak was still a gangly, six-foot-tall man in specially made boots that provided traction and the power to stop on a dime, via special cleats on the bottoms. He was many things, but, light on his feet was, surprisingly, not one of them. She could literally hear him coming from blocks away. Still, not being able to see hin, she initially dismissed it as her imagination, until one evening, while pleasantly passing the time with a few new friends she'd made, one of whom was Socrates "Socks" Walker, the nephew of her Order Patrol teammate, HardLight, and a speedster, himself, asked, out of the blue, why Bluestreak was following her, and trying to be sneaky about it. It takes someone with super-speed temporal perception to recognize when a speedster is on the move, apparently. Realizing that she was being followed, she put a plan in motion to ditch her shadow, and go about enacting a plan of action for changing her life that she'd been working on for a few days.

  Commander Valor was angry and disappointed that Bluestreak had been tricked. It turned out that the 'Charlotte Trent' that the speedster had been spying on for the last two days was, in fact, Drew Dane, a shapeshifter friend of the real Charlotte's who had acted as a decoy while she ran off to God knows where! Chuck searched and searched, but, could find no trace of her. She'd skipped her college classes for days. She hadn't shown up at her dorm room. Her roommate said that she'd been home a few days previous, but, literally disappeared shortly after walking in the door and going straight to the bathroom. Chuck figured that this had been when the shapeshifter, Drew Dane, was impersonating her. He lurked uptown, near the Herald Building, where Charlotte, Drew Dane and some of their other friends often gathered . He wasn't very fond of her palling around with them. They were mostly teenagers - a little too young for her to associate with, in his opinion - but, then, there was the mysterious "Jenny Everywhere ", some sort of dimensional traveler... and, of course, ZED HUDSON . A loose cannon with WAY too much power for Commander Valor's comfort. One of the few people on the planet in his 'weight class', and, what's worse - Zed wasn't intimidated by Commander Valor's power, position or reputation. There was no evidence that Zed was a criminal, but, The Commander was ALWAYS keeping a sly eye on the Urban Gladiator. Particularly now that he was associating with Valor Girl.
  Chuck had HardLight talk to his speedy nephew and try to extract info, but, Socrates hadn't seen Valor Girl in days. Commander Valor himself questioned Zed, after tracking him to an East side bar and grill called 'Smedley's', but, he was uncooperative.
  "Even if I HAD seen her inside of three days, what makes you think I'd tell YOU"?, Zed spat. Holding back the urge to sock the impudent thug in his face, Commander Valor simply flew off to continue the search, leaving Zed to continue drinking and mercilessly flirting with the dive bar's pretty and rather buxom bartender.

  Commander Valor canvassed almost all of New York City in the span of two days. He'd questioned Captain Evening and The Odds, and the girls of their periphery team, "Generation P" - a team that his niece, Valor Girl had temporarily joined without his knowledge or permission . He wasn't very fond of The Odds OR Section P. The last time Valor Girl had gotten involved with those people, she wound up on a damned reality show, chasing after some transdimensional superhero old enough to be her grandfather!
  Commander Valor was coming up empty in all his searches. None of the other heroes had seen hide nor hair of Valor Girl. He was starting to worry for her safety. Usually, she'd check in with him if she was to be out, if only to stave off a lecture. With no luck with superheroes, the Juggernaut of Justice figured that he'd shake down the local villains and metahuman leg-breakers.
Like a blizzard of brute force, Commander Valor literally dropped in on known hideouts, back alley speakeasys and sinister social clubs frequented by the spandex set from the Dark Side of the Tracks.

  Not caring about being subtle, or of lawsuits or his reputation as a do-gooder, Commander Valor wiped the floor with Hexia's mob of mooks , and threatened to do the same to her. She didn't know anything about Valor Girl's whereabouts. He tracked down the power-absorbing Invada, and made sure to physically incapacitate her before the interrogation . Nothing. He swooped down on the despicable Harvester and broke his arm just on general principle before questioning him. The insectoid degenerate knew nothing. Even the mercenary assassin, WolfSpider, who had been captured and humiliated on television by his niece and other members of the Order Patrol fairly recently , had no knowledge of where she could be, though, the smug bastard actually offered his dubious services as a manhunter to track her down. The Commander seriously pondered the idea for a second, then, decided that he didn't need the help of WolfSpider's kind. The only idea more odious to him was to fly over toward the Stantz Building and check on whether his niece might be in the clutches of the self-proclaimed villain organization, SCARR. After the humiliation handed to him by their leader, Dr. Echidna , he thought better of it. If their leader, "Doctor Echidna' had her, she'd have called to gloat by now.
  There was one other option that he hadn't considered - he, for the most part, had been searching for Valor Girl. Aside from checking with her dorm roommate, he hadn't really been searching for CHARLOTTE TRENT
.
  His niece was almost 21 years old. She was under a lot of stress and would most likely be spending her free time trying to blow off steam. As much as he'd like to believe that she would never sneak into a bar or club underaged, he had to admit to himself that perhaps he'd been seeing her through rose-colored glasses for a while, now. As much as he'd like to think that she was above such things, due to his 'raising her right', he had to admit that there have been some drastic changes to her personality lately -and by lately, he realized that he meant 'for the last year, or more'. Perhaps she would, indeed, turn to alcohol and wild times to tamp down the rising emotions she'd been experiencing. Also, she probably wouldn't want to be alone. It was only a matter of finding her.

  Chuck Trent was never much for the club scene, even in his younger, relatively more irresponsible days, and he was downright out of touch with whatever the HELL was going on in young people's minds these days. He had no clue where to go or what to look for. Loath as he was to admit it, there was only ONE person who might have a clue where to start. Knight Raptor.
The exchange was brief and unpleasant, as were all encounters with the Metropolitan Ninja with whom Commander Valor reluctantly shared co-leadership of The Order Patrol. Knight Raptor was a rich know-it-all who prided himself at being the best at everything. It was infuriating that a man with as much power as The Commander was frequently bested at being a superhero by a man who, for all intents and purposes had no superpowers. Still, after being condescended to and taunted, Commander Valor got what he wanted - a short list of nightclubs that Knight Raptor claimed that his niece frequented as either Charlotte or as Valor Girl. He decided that he'd try "Pineapple" first - a club that was infamous for catering to the younger set of supers in New York City. He thought it might be prudent to show up in full Commander Valor regalia. It was easy to get in. He WAS Commander Valor, after all. He still had a reputation. The brawny and obviously metahuman bouncers at the front door of the club tried to stop him, initially. He was too old to be 'cool enough' to be allowed entry, but, then, he was too powerful for them to actually STOP him. The blue-skinned one with the large horn protruding from his forehead unhooked the velvet rope and stepped aside to let the red-eyed crusader pass.

  The club was, as one might expect, pitch dark, yet filled with blinding lights that blinked and roved across the undulating crowd, and blaring noise, er, "music" that The Commander had to concentrate on blocking out. His super-hearing could be a curse, sometimes. He used his Valor-vision™ to scan the crowds - penetrating the walls of the club as well what little concealing clothing could be found on a few of the patrons to make sure those few wearing hats, trenchcoats and dark glasses weren't his niece in paranoid disguise. Nothing but useless A-List celebrities and low-level villains having a night out.
He saw a few familiar faces - heroes secretly canoodling with known villains. Married movers and shakers having trysts with people who were not their spouses. A couple of folks who were on the most wanted list, but, he didn't have the time or inclination to bother with them. He was on a more righteous mission. It's not like they didn't see him, either! He was hard to miss. 6' 4", dressed in red, white and blue, eyes glowing red with both ionic energies and an angry frustration. Several patrons began a swift, and somewhat unsubtle exodus to the exit.
  The music didn't stop, as it often does in those comedies and westerns you see at the movies, when Commander Valor strode across the busy dancefloor, but, it may as well have.
  EVERYONE stopped dancing, and stared at the caped behemoth as he made his way to the bar, having spotted, not his niece, but, someone who might know of her whereabouts.
  "YOU", he said, glaring at the lass at the bar. A leggy, curly-haired blonde with a beauty mark on her cheek, just below her right eye. She had a lemon drop in one hand and the petite hip of a lovely party-goer in the grip of her other.
"Where is my niece?!", Valor demanded. Claire Jones, the timelost possible future daughter of the superheroines Centennia and Kate Five , cocked an eyebrow at the imposing hero, swallowed the remainder of her neon yellow alcoholic beverage in one gulp and kissed her playmate on the cheek, then shooed her away with a smack on her taut bottom.
"HELLO", she barked, sarcastically, "You must be COMMANDER VALOR. It's NICE to finally MEET YOU. Your niece, Valor Girl has told me so VERYmuch about you! My name is CLAIRE (not "YOU"). Now, perhaps you'd wanna rephrase your initial question as something a bit less confrontational.... and dickish?"
  Commander Valor was not having attitude from this mere slip of a girl. It had been a very long week, and he was losing his considerable patience. Perhaps he did come across a bit aggressively, but, he was Commander Valor, goddammit, and his ego had suffered far too much disrespect in the last little while.
  "Look here, you--", he began.
"There's that 'YOU', again", Claire Jones countered, signalling the bartender with two waved fingers for another drink, "I can tell you're having some sort of difficulty. I can empathize with that, but, whatEVER it is you want from me, the 'intimidating testosterone poisoned caveman' routine is NOT gonna get it. I've taken down men twice your size without spilling my drink.... earlier this very evening, even." To emphasize her point, Claire took a sip of the fresh drink she'd just received, and, raising her left and and crooking her dainty fingers into a claw, manifested the black goo that swam in her bloodstream to slither up her forearm, cover said fingers and harden into actual razor sharp talons.

  Now, for those paying attention, by this point, the music had actually stopped. The club was dead quiet. Onlookers stood transfixed on the scene at the bar. The bartender, a slight man with blue hair and a monocle ducked down behind his bar, pressed a button concealed beneath it, and tucked himself into a ball as titanium slats fell from the ceiling, encasing the alcohol station in a protective shell. The Commander fumed. Back in the old days, the name Commander Valor garnered terror from all and sundry who would opposed him. Now, he was being stared down by some drunken slattern barely older than his own niece. Worse, she called herself Charlotte's friend! This 'Claire Jones' was another of Valor Girl's friends. Yet another one that The Commander was not very fond of. The daughter of two supers with 'a reputation', as well as being part of an 'unconventional' relationship with two other supers - one a "former" criminal, the other, notoriously transgendered. The Commander's old world sensibilities were turned on their heads every time he even THOUGHT of his impressionable young niece even being in the periphery of these people!
Despite his rising anger, Commander Valor took a very deep breath, calmed himself and slowly, deliberately and through clenched teeth, reiterated his question.

  "I would like to know where my niece is. You're her... "friend", so, you might know. IF you know, you have to tell me. Now."
Claire smirked. The black goo continued to spread across her supple body, engulfing the tight dress she wore, covering the left half of her torso and continued to slowly move west.
  "I don't know where Char-- er, 'Valor Girl' is", she stated, matter-of-factly, catching herself before letting slip her friend's secret identity and signalling over her shoulder for another drink to an absent bartender who was no longer on duty, "I haven't seen or talked to her in almost two days. The last thing I heard, she was trying to avoid some overbearing, nosy, lying, hyper-controlling ASSHOLE of a relative, who shall remain nameless, and searching for the truth about VERY IMPORTANT things that were kept from her all her LIFE! You wouldn't know anything about THAT, wouldja? That may be a clue to her whereabouts."
  The Commander tensed his mighty muscles, fully prepared to knock some respect into this young woman. Claire, no stranger to battle, could see the attack coming, and swiftly, spread the black matter across the rest of her frame, even covering her usually bare legs, making it all as solid as tank armor, and covering herself in protective spikes.
The onlookers began to flow backward, giving the two powerful supers room to destroy one another. The smarter ones left entirely. It was likely that this club wouldn't survive the onslaught. Cameraphones flashed, and many a record button was pushed as the burly mutant bouncers bulldozed their way through the throngs of club patrons, on their way to the prospective melee. Claire Jones and Commander Valor spat epithets at one another. Black tendrils slithered and writhed. Red eyes flared fiery energies. Suddenly, two people burst forth from the crowd and leapt between the two powerful combatants: A short girl in a bright red dress, sporting a red star over her right eye, with bright green eyes and hot pink hair, and a chubby Asian girl long hair down her back wearing a tight black dress emblazened with a purple octopus down the front whose tentacles splayed all around her torso, including forming the shoulder straps.
  Commander Valor recognized the star-faced girl: She called herself "Starlet', and fancied herself a superhero. She was a fan of his niece who managed to worm her way into Charlotte's social circle . She was one of the less... offensive of the people Valor Girl associated with these days, as upon searching, Commander Valor hadn't turned up any dirt on her. He had no idea who the pudgy girl in the octopus dress was, and, didn't care. They had just halted what would have been a devastating battle that might have destroyed half this city block, destroyed the club and cost lives. As much as Commander Valor desperately desired to take out his mounting frustrations - particularly on anyone belonging to the smart-assed, disrespectful younger generation of self-proclaimed heroes, this was neither the time, nor the place. Finding Charlotte was more important. Starlet and the girl in the octopus dress, along with several of the lumbering metahuman bouncers, escorted Commander Valor out the back door of the club, while Claire, now back in her tight dress, free of her black goo defenses, banged on the titanium shell around the bar, petitioning for yet another drink.

  The monster bouncers left the supers to talk amongst themselves in the dingy back alley. Ne'er-do-wells, lurking in the gloom, saw Commander Valor and Starlet and took off for parts unknown, like rats scurrying away from hungry alley cats.
"Look, I can tell you something that might help", said Starlet, seeming to genuinely worry about her favorite heroine, "Valor Girl and I have been e-mailing and texting back and forth for a while now. You... you really HURT her, y'know."
  Commander Valor felt indignant that this little girl... this complete stranger had the nerve to tell him his own family business, but, before his knee-jerk defensive attitude could activate, she continued.
  "She's angry and scared, and just wants answers. Answers that you've kept from her her entire life. She's determined to find those answers on her own because she feels she can't trust you anymore. Do you KNOW how it feels to not be able to trust the very person who's supposed to always be in your corner?!"
  Before letting fly with a lecture, which Chuck Trent suddenly realized was his default mode when speaking to anyone younger than himself, he flashed back to the day he found out that the people who raised him weren't really his aunt and uncle. He realized that, in trying to keep his niece from feeling that level of betrayal, he had, possibly, inadvertently done that very thing.
  The pudgy girl in the octopus dress spoke up, reminding Commander Valor that his behavior had been less than stellar - having Valor Girl followed, spying on her, lying to her... what did he THINK was gonna happen when she found out?! Commander Valor stared his piercing, crimson gaze at the girl for seconds on end, making her feel intimidated.
  "WHO are you, again?!", he demanded.
The girl's features immediately began to melt and blur, she lost weight and even shrank an inch or two and quick as a wink, she'd metamorphosed into a completely different person! A diminutive, androgynous-looking, lavender skinned elf with bleach white hair and freckle-spots adorning their face and neck. The octopus dress transformed itself into a black T-shirt with the same octopus where it had always been. baggy black cargo pants manifested across the lavender person's legs and the open-toed high heels became flat sandals.

  "Holy shit! Drew Dane !", came an exclamation from behind them all. Claire Jones, now three sheets to the wind, had rejoined the party, having slipped, unnoticed by all and sundry out the back door to the club and into the dark alley. The octo-girl was, indeed, Drew Dane, shapeshifting child of the sea god, Proteus, and another good friend of the missing Valor Girl. Claire weaved her way to the circle of supers and leaned, almost falling, heavily on Drew, her rather prominent bosom mashed into the face of the short demigod as she gave Drew a hug. Despite the pleasant distraction, Drew continued.
  "Look, I know you think that what you've been doing is for the best. My own parents didn't initially tell me about my own heritage until it... became an issue."

  Drew sighed and looked off the the side for a second, trying desperately to avoid staring at Claire's bust.
"Look, man", Drew continued, "I don't actually know where Charlotte is, but, I know who does".
  Claire, still annoyed at The Commander, and intoxicated almost beyond her rather strong constitution, shushed her lavender faced friend, not wanting to give an inch after the earlier rudeness that Valor had shown her. Wanting to avoid yet another potentially destructive battle, Starlet spoke up: "KNIGHT RAPTOR!", she shouted, "She got information from Knight Raptor! He gave her some bit of info on whatever she was looking for. i don't know what it was, but, whatever it was, she left immediately to go track it down! That was the last I heard from her!"
  Commander Valor, Drew and Claire all stared, utterly gobsmacked at the star-faced girl. Drew, for her taking the words right out of their mouth. Claire, because even she hadn't known the full truth. Valor Girl hadn't divulged the fact that she'd had a clear goal, or where she was going. She just said that she was going on a 'fact-finding mission' down south, and she'd declined help when Claire offered.
  Commander Valor was shocked and appalled, not only that his niece had circumvented his authority, but that she went to HIM for help - and that Knight Raptor had kept all this from him. In a blind rage, Commander Valor leapt skyward and kept moving at a bullet's pace, obviously headed toward The Hall of Order - hopefully with something other than MURDER on his mind.
  "Well", Claire slurred, "THAT happened. So... Jeanette and Cap'n Perfect're off doin'... stuff... without me. You two wanna have some fun"?

  Starlet politely declined. She wasn't quite sure that Claire was actually proposing sexual shenannigans, but, she turned the brash blonde down, anyway, as, she didn't really swing that way. (And if she DID, there's only one girl she would be game for experimenting with and she was missing, her angry Uncle currently back on the hunt for her.) Drew Dane, however, could think of little else at the moment with the tipsy time-traveller's warm and rather impressive chest currently cleaved by their angular lavender-hued nose. Claire Jones had wanted to get a shapeshifter into her bed for some time. This would be a special night, indeed.

  Meanwhile, at the Hall of Order, Knight Raptor, who practically had the entirety of NYC wired via cellphones and CCTV cams and security equipment manufactured by the Vayne Enterprises Corporation, had witnessed the night's events. Commander Valor was coming for him, with all due speed and smoldering anger. It looked like now was the time to employ the counter-measures he'd been cooking up to defend against Commander Valor. He knew that helping Valor Girl break from her uncle's controlling 'love' would set his plans in motion. He knew Chuck Trent wasn't gonna be in the mood to talk. He might even let the super-powered Juggernaut of Justice get in one good strike before seriously trying to take him out... If he decimated Valor in 'self defense', he'd be totally justified in using lethal force.

  Tonight was going to be a very good night for Knight Raptor.